Grapefruit and star anise mini sugar cookies with grapefruit curd.

Poor grapefruit, it’s often overlooked in search of more common citrus like lemons, oranges and limes. Me and grapefruit got off to a rocky start, when I was young my mum used to try to force feed me them every morning thinking that if she put enough sugar on top of one she could fool me into thinking it wasnt there and sneak some vitamins in to me and my sibling in a very counter-productive way. But never fear me and grapefruit have become friends at last, we put aside our differences after a period of astrangment where I think we were both growning as people (mild buffy refference) and forgot about those horrible experiences, and more importantly im skint and a grapefruit offers more juice and zest for your money than a lemon making it perfect for baking and it saves buying lots of lemons to make a small amount of juice. Grapefruits are just as versatile as another citrus when it come to baking! So show them some love and sugar them up, just not in the traditional broiled grapefruit way (yuck!).

Method:
Beat the sugar and margarine together until light and fluffy, add the flaxseed, grapefruit zest, ground star anise and grapefruit juice and beat together. Sift in the flour and baking soda and mix together untill the mix comes together as a nice dough. Wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge to firm up for about 30 mins. Once the dough has firmed up nicely, preheat the oven to 180c/350f, grease two cookie sheets and dust a clean work surface with flour. Roll out the dough on the floured surface and grab a small cookie cutter and cut out cookie shapes and transfer them to the greased cookie sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes, remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool for about 5 minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool completly.Either enjot as they are or sandwich together with the grapefruit curd.

Method:
Whisk the grapefruit juice, zest, cornflour and sugar together in a sauce pan and turn on the heat, bring up to a gentle bubble and cook until thickened. Scrape into a bowl and allow to cool before transferring to a jar and storing in the fridge.

Yeah…it sure is! 😉 It has also given me all kinds of ideas for mango curd, passionfruit curd, pineapple curd and now that it is coming into our winter citrus season blood orange curd…YUM! Your genius fuels my slothful lazy uncreative mind yet again 🙂